


Remembrance

by bacchic_revelry



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, FYI Gabriel is only mentioned, Flash Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 08:39:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12627201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bacchic_revelry/pseuds/bacchic_revelry
Summary: Jack ruminates on his recent near-lethal encounter with the infamous Reaper. (Takes place right after the "Old Soldiers" comic.)





	Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little scene that wouldn't let me go to bed without writing it down.

Jack was not surprised Ana had made Cairo’s necropolis her base of operations. She always had a flare for the ironic, and a city of the dead seemed the perfect hideout for two not-quite-dead soldiers.

Gabriel would have laughed if he knew where they now made their home.

Ana’s workshop was surprisingly well-equipped. The room she had chosen was large, and she filled the space with a makeshift kitchen, a shelving unit, several crates of ammo and other sundry supplies, and three desks—one a station to create and refill her darts and grenades, another a gun rack, and the last a computer set up for surveillance.

With a cut-off groan, Jack slumped against the chamber’s stone wall. He clutched at his side. Ana’s biotic darts had closed the wound, but his muscles throbbed in remembrance of the powerful, point-blank shotgun blast.

Ana busied herself with her rifle, taking it apart bit by bit for meticulous inspection.

They had not spoken since they arrived at the necropolis, but he understood. She had glimpsed the Reaper’s true face, something even Jack had yet to do. He would gladly allow her the chance to draw her mind away from the horrific sight of what their companion had become.

The urge to do the same creeped into his mind. He shoved it away. Jack wanted to remember—to  _know_. Gabriel was a good man. He deserved to be remembered as he was, and to have someone know the fate that befell him.

Clinking metal echoed in his ears as Ana continued working with her rifle. The stagnant stench of musk hung in the room, and grains of sands pricked at his hands and legs.

Jack was grounded, but still, his mind wandered.

He thought of Gabriel. Of unguarded smiles and hearty laughter. Of cold hands under warm blankets. Of heady kisses. Of secret promises. Of fights that ended in understanding and those that ended in lonely beds. Of distance. Of resentment. Of everything they could have had and everything that was stripped away from them.

Jack stood, his weary bones crackling as they unbent. For a moment, Jack Morrison was just a man—a very old man. Tired, mourning.

A pale face backed by darkness caught his eye. He crossed the room to loom at Ana’s computer desk. There was a stutter in her well-practiced movements as he passed her, but she did not stop.

Two computer monitors mounted the desk alongside a closed laptop. On one screen was an orange-hued world map dotted with numerous sightings of the Reaper. Los Angeles, Gibraltar, Numbani, Oasis. On the other, pixelated security footage from Volskaya Industries revealed the broad form of the Reaper. A zoomed-in image appeared beside it, an image of the Reaper’s notorious mask: pitch white, in the shape of an owl’s skull.

Jack shivered as a cold wash of sorrow swept through him. Remembering.

He knew this man as an enemy—a terrorist—but the sharp line of his shoulders, the strength in his stance, the loose hold he kept on the impressive shotguns in his hands… It was all Gabriel.

He would never forget.

“Can we track him? Find where he’s going next?” Jack’s voice was hoarser than he expected.

At last, Ana’s nimble fingers paused in their ministrations. He did not look at her.

“I believe so,” she said, “but I do not think we have the means to kill the Reaper yet.”

“That’s not my intention.”

Ana gazed at his back. Silhouetted by the glow of the monitors, she could almost imagine Jack as the commander he once was. Hard-working, determined, selfless. Naïve.

When he said nothing more, Ana returned to her rifle’s maintenance routine, and, with the shadow of a smile, she said, “Nor mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you like it, check me out on [tumblr](https://bacchic-revelry.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
